Rick Grimes 2000 Review (Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley)

The dead were just the beginning - now it’s time for Rick Grimes and co. to take on an alien invasion!

Uh… ok.

Negan Lives! Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Nearly a year to the day after the last issue of The Walking Dead was published, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard return for this unheralded one-shot: Negan Lives!

The Walking Dead, Volume 32: Rest In Peace Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

It’s… over?

Wha… no foolin’!? Sweet zombie jesus!

The Walking Dead, Volume 31: The Rotten Core Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

The shitshow that is The Walking Dead staggers on for yet another volume in the aptly named, Volume 31: The Rotten Core. Who knew that the Commonwealth, an authoritarian group obsessed with hierarchy enforced through an overbearing police presence, would turn out to be gasp kinda evil oh right everyone duurrr?!

The Walking Dead, Volume 30: New World Order Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Rick and his jolly band come across a new group: the Commonwealth! And so begins the same old story – can they trust them or is they nutballs?

The Walking Dead, Volume 29: Lines We Cross Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Ah, the reliable roller-coaster of quality that is The Walking Dead! After the spectacular rush of Volume 28 comes the expected long, tedious build-up to the next bit of excitement with table-setting being the order of the day in Volume 29: Lines We Cross. 

The Walking Dead: Here's Negan! Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Heeeeeeere’s.... an obvious cash-grab! Ahhh, who can blame Image, eh? The Walking Dead is their Batman/Spider-Man - that they haven’t exploited it as much as DC/Marvel have their own properties is pretty remarkable in itself! So, in order to make their Image+ magazine successful, a short, serialized Walking Dead spinoff starring the title’s best character, Negan, was included. And it wasn’t bad! 

The Walking Dead, Volume 28: A Certain Doom Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

I never know what to expect with The Walking Dead because the quality ebbs and flows - two books in a row might stink but the next will be great, and so on like that. So I’m delighted to say that Volume 28: A Certain Doom is not just one of the good ones but also one of the best additions to the series yet! 

The biggest challenge Rick’s group has ever faced is upon them: a thousands-strong herd of zombies sent their way by the Whisperers. Even if they survive, some are bound to fall - but who? 

The Walking Dead, Volume 27: The Whisperer War Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

It’s Rick’s crew vs The Whisperers, the nutters who wear zombie skin and live among the zombie herds! Rick’s guys have guns, swords, horses, and walled communities; The Whisperers have bows and arrows, knives, zombies and live in the woods. Yeah, I loves me a good one-sided fight, really puts you on the edge of your seat, that’s why the Ronda Rousey/Amanda Nunes fight was the best ever! Damn, already broke my resolution to be less sarcastic this year... 

The Walking Dead, Volume 26: Call To Arms Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

In The Walking Dead, Volume 26: This Will Never End Call To Arms, Robert Kirkman does the inevitable on a couple of long-standing obvious plot-points! Eugene makes contact with a new group via his ham radio, Rick grows more as a leader and the settlements are preparing for war against the Whisperers. But the major development is Negan finally getting free and making his way to the Whisperer’s camp…

The Walking Dead, Volume 25: No Turning Back Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

It should’ve been a time for celebration but Alpha and the Whisperers have brought tragedy and horror to the townspeople of Alexandria. Now, the friends and family of the victims demand action from their leader Rick Grimes - instant retaliation - especially against the one former Whisperer in their midst, Lydia, Alpha’s troubled teenage daughter. With pressure building each hour he doesn’t act, Rick turns to an unlikely advisor for answers. 

The Walking Dead, Volume 24: Life and Death Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Things are going well for once and Rick’s settlement is flourishing - they’re even putting on their first fair! Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Rick, Carl has followed his girlfriend Lydia back to her people, the dark and menacing Whisperers - is he safe? Back at Hilltop Maggie must decide what to do with her would-be assassin Gregory, and Negan reminds Rick of his ever-present danger. 

The Walking Dead, Volume 23: Whispers Into Screams Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Writing “spoilers” for a review of the 23RD VOLUME in a series seems a bit pointless, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re considering reading this and have read the past 22 volumes, why are you reading a review BEFORE reading the book itself? You’re gonna read it whether or not it’s good. You’ve read 22 volumes, you’re in this ‘til the bitter end like me, which means you’ve read the book and know what happened. Other people reading this review, they don’t care about spoilers, they’re probably just killing time at work. 

The Walking Dead, Volume 22: A New Beginning Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

You know what The Walking Dead needs? Captions. Not a lot, just a couple. Like at the start of this volume, maybe mention that this is taking place one, two, maybe three years after the last book? It’s a small thing but it’d be really handy to have. 

So some time has passed since Rick defeated Negan and the communities of Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Rick’s place, known as Alexandria, have thrived and developed into safe havens. Hole-in-the-head-yet-still-alive-for-some-reason Karl has grown into a young man, and he wants to move out from his dad’s place to Hilltop, under Maggie’s leadership, to be a blacksmith. 

The Walking Dead, Volume 21: All Out War Part 2 Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

The first half of All Out War was exciting, fast-paced and ended on a great cliffhanger – Rick and his group were on their knees, their colony bombed to hell with grenades, and Negan and the Saviors were at the door on the brink of victory. So you’d expect the second half to hit the ground running, right? Wrong! Robert Kirkman totally flubs the finale and ends up writing a tedious, contrived mess of a comic!

First of all – what the hell happened in between the last book and this one? The bad guys were outside the walls of the colony, but now they’ve backed off for no good reason and gone back home – why? They were winning! They needed one more push and they’d have won! For some reason Kirkman’s sent Negan and the Saviors back to their base so that Negan can tell everyone to dip their weapons in zombie gunk so even if they don’t kill the person they hit, they’ll end up turning into zombies anyway (which is a ruthless but decent idea, to be fair).

This gives Rick and co. the chance to make it, en masse, to Hilltop for the final stand when Negan, written up ‘til now as this brilliant tactician, should’ve really stayed where he was, outside of the gates, and ambushed the ragtag group on their journey, finishing them off. Sending him away for no good reason was totally nonsensical!

Things get momentarily exciting once the action finally restarts but Negan is once again out of character, suddenly making bad decisions that make his forces vulnerable when they don’t need to be – they have the upper hand throughout!

Then the story returns to the steady monotonous lull until Rick and Negan eventually meet face to face for a final confrontation. But what should be an amazing showdown becomes a total wash. This new, stupid Negan is feebly outwitted by Rick in a way that he wouldn’t have been in earlier books. It was simply a ridiculous way to end All Out War. Though I did like that there was a twist to Negan’s fate which sets up some potentially fun future storylines – that is unless Kirkman screws those up too!

I fly through some Walking Dead books but unfortunately this one was one of those where I kept putting it down and doing anything else instead. I got through it after three sittings but what should’ve been an edge-of-the-seat read was mostly full of yawns. All Out War Part 2 is a disappointing and clumsy conclusion to the Negan story arc.

The Walking Dead Volume 21: All Out War Part 2

The Walking Dead, Volume 20: All Out War Part 1 Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

When superhero comics do purely fight stories, they tend to be pretty terrible (like Marvel’s AVX or DC’s Trinity War), but when The Walking Dead does it? Home run!

Maybe it’s because Robert Kirkman’s built up the characters over so long that we now care about them, or maybe it’s because the characters aren’t decades-old superheroes who will never die. Maybe it’s a more tense situation as Kirkman’s shown that he has no issues with taking out major characters to shake up a story. 

Or maybe it’s because the story is more realistic – if a character gets shot, they go down, they don’t keep going because they don’t have superpowers. I think it’s because we all know Rick’s going to kill Negan and we’re waiting for that moment to come. At any rate, The Walking Dead’s latest and greatest storyline featuring a very small scale war between Rick’s group and Negan’s is completely engrossing.

Kirkman wastes no time in sending Rick out to formally declare war by striking first against Negan’s factory, and from then on the rest of the book follows how Rick’s forces fare against Negan’s outposts, the two characters pitting their tactics against one another in a desperate fight to the death. Lots of characters die followed with lots of twists and turns – I don’t want to give away details but I thought Kirkman’s plotting was absolutely first rate. I especially liked how Rick uses the zombies as tools in his plans!

The “Part 1” of the title might annoy some readers who were looking to see this conflict resolved in one volume, like when the Governor attacked the prison earlier in the series, but Negan has proved to be a more resilient and complex character than the Governor who won’t go down so easily. Plus this conflict is a much larger and more ambitious story than any other attempted so far and Kirkman crams in so many awesome set pieces that there’s no way this could be a done-in-one story.

Even though Kirkman skims over certain plot obstacles for those surprise moments when characters seemingly pop out of nowhere, there’s still so much happening in this book that you need at least one more volume to do the arc justice. And really, when you hit a rich narrative vein like this, why would you want it over sooner rather than later? Especially when things get turned up to 11 in the final act when Negan reveals a secret weapon that completely changes the balance of the war in his favour…

Jesus continues to be awesome in his action hero role, I love that Maggie’s playing a bigger role, Rick continues to flourish as a leader, now assuming the role of military commander, and Negan continues to baffle with his behaviour – he doesn’t condone rape but he doesn’t blink when it comes to murdering his own people? What a bizarre morality he has! I can’t nail down his character nor guess what he’s about to do next which is a big part of his appeal.

All Out War Part 1 is a fantastic read – it’s all killer, no filler and longtime readers of the series will love it. It’s blisteringly paced and you’ll fly through this in one sitting, wishing you had the next volume to hand immediately after (and if you’re reading this in the future, grab all parts of All Out War and read it as one!). Totally thrilling stuff, the series is at its best the more Rick and co. are up against it and never before have they been in more trouble than with evil Fonzie at their gates - 20 volumes in and the series has never been more exciting!

The Walking Dead Volume 20: All Out War Part 1

The Walking Dead, Volume 19: March To War Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

After 19 volumes of The Walking Dead, I’ve gotten a feel for how this series works – or at least I thought I did. Usually after a couple of exciting books full of action, Robert Kirkman takes a volume to cool things off and have the characters talk about what just happened. That’s what volume 19 started out like and I thought, bah, another boring build-up book – and then the second half EXPLODED!

Rick and Jesus are assembling a force to take down Negan, recruiting fighters from Hilltop and the Kingdom without Negan knowing about the tsunami that’s brewing right under his nose. But then he inadvertently kicks things off when he goes to Rick’s place to collect tribute while Rick’s away in the Kingdom making plans. Now this war is on!

It’s tricky reviewing a series this far deep into the story. Chances are if you’re still interested in this series, you’re going to read volume 19 whether the reviews say it’s good or not, in which case you’ve already read this and know what happened, so whatever I say won’t be a spoiler. On the other hand, maybe you’re reading this review and you’ve not read this far yet and want to know if it’s still a good series, in which case I don’t want to give away plot points, especially in this volume as they’re pretty damn surprising! At any rate, I’ll err on the side of caution and keep spoilers out of this review.

The thing you should know is when you put Rick and Negan together, sparks fly (and not the romantic kind)! The tension between these two is cray-cray and Kirkman knows readers are waiting for the moment when Rick kills Negan (it couldn’t be the other way round - could it?) and tantalisingly plays with that expectation here to thrilling effect. With this opening salvo, who lives and who dies? 

And I have to say, if the Christian Jesus were half as badass as the Jesus in this book is, I’d have converted years ago! He appears and disappears from rooms without a whisper, he’s deadly without guns or knives, he moves like a ninja – he’s basically Batman without the outfit! I know Kirkman’s got a tendency to take out characters on a whim and, besides Glenn, there hasn’t been a character death – out of the dozens – in the 19 volumes that’s really stuck out, but I’d be really upset if Jesus got the axe! But you know if he did and he became zombie Jesus, someone would make the “I thought he was supposed to rise after 3 days, not 30 minutes!” line.

Also some of Kirkman’s trademark awkward dialogue makes an appearance here. Andrea repeatedly says to herself “we don’t die” referring to her and Rick, which doesn’t sound so much like dialogue as Andrea reading Kirkman’s notes after he forgot to write her lines.

Volume 19 starts slow but begins sprinting at the halfway mark and doesn’t stop until the end – it’s an absolutely blistering read! This human war – amidst the zombie apocalypse of all things – has begun and it looks like it’s gonna be the best thing to have happened to the series yet!

The Walking Dead Volume 19: March to War

The Walking Dead, Volume 18: What Comes After Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Evil Fonzie - he might be a nutjob but he’s not boring!

After the last volume, I said that Negan was the most two-dimensional of bad guys but Robert Kirkman gives his character some unexpected depth in this book. After Negan and his Saviors show up to collect tribute from Rick’s group, future serial killer Carl Grimes (Rick’s 12 year old son) stows away on one of Negan’s trucks - with one of Abraham’s giant machine guns!

When he’s inevitably caught, what does Negan do? I won’t spoil it but given his entrance into this series I was expecting much darker repercussions for young Carl than what he gets, and Negan’s explanation to Rick for how he dealt with Carl makes sense in the long term given what they’re doing. 

Via Carl, we see what Negan’s compound looks like which is as depressing a place as you’d think. His stranglehold over the ordinary people living in the factory with him, along with some weird points system and warped laws, makes the whole place feel like a cult. We also find out the sad story behind Dwight - the Two Face-lookalike - and how his face became that way. 

Negan’s a great element for the plot because whenever he shows up, the scene’s immediately tense as he’s totally unpredictable. Will he snap and brain someone else a la Glenn, or will he laugh horribly and move on? Also, now Rick and co. have an urgent goal - get rid of this psycho asap! 

How to get rid of someone as seemingly all-powerful as Negan? Approach another colony for help. Rick and Jesus visit a new character, Ezekiel, who’s the leader of one of the colonies in the trade network Jesus spoke about, to join forces and topple Negan once and for all. 

This part of the book felt a bit Game of Thrones-y, not least because Ezekiel demands everyone call him king and his guards actually dress like ye olden knights for some reason, and the divided kingdom/different colonies setup reads like the many houses in Westeros banding together to defeat the Lannisters. But hey, I’m looking forward to the conflict anyway. 

18 volumes in and the series is still very readable and exciting, so full credit to Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard for sustaining it for this long. Granted there have been ebbs and flows with the quality but bringing in Negan was a great move that’s really pumped new life into the series, and it looks like a white knuckle ride from here on out with all out conflict between Rick and Negan. 

To war, then! It’s weird how the zombies almost feel like an afterthought at this point…

The Walking Dead, Volume 18: What Comes After

The Walking Dead, Volume 17: Something to Fear Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

In the wake of the zombie apocalypse, one thought above all else has never left my head: “what happened to all of the Fonzie impersonators?”. Now I know: they all joined together under the leadership of Negan, the latest big bad in The Walking Dead.

On their return trip from Hilltop, Rick and co. (a name which makes them sound like a window washing company) encounter the first of Negan’s bikers, a fateful tussle that calls down the full wrath of evil Fonzie himself. Rick’s hubris toward Negan leads to the death of two major characters and a new challenge for the group – but how do they fight overwhelming forces and leather jackets?

Negan and the others are a pretty one-dimensional group of people: they are bad, bad dudes who only bully/beat/murder people into getting what they want, and even threaten gang rape of children – one of them even has part of his face disfigured like a low rent Two-Face! And Negan himself? His opening speech used the word “fuck” so liberally, you’d think it was verbal punctuation (and of course only the baddest of the bad say fuck all the time)! So yeah, they are most definitely the villains and not at all rounded characters.

But what they lack in characterisation, they make up for in what they’ve done to the series direction because suddenly the story’s come roaring back to life! The best part of the series so far was when the Governor and Woodbury threatened Rick and co. in the prison, so to have another foe like him, but smarter, with more numbers and better trained men, is an exciting direction to take the series – far better than the stagnation of the last couple books.

Robert Kirkman underlines Negan’s significance by having him kill off two major characters, one of whom has been with the title since the start and whose death was quite shocking, in a way that the deaths of other characters have never been. As gruesome as that scene played out, it was absolutely riveting and showed how utterly compelling a figure Negan is. That said, the other character’s death was unexpected but hilarious, so back to the usual standard for Kirkman! 

Speaking of poor characterisation, Kirkman suddenly starts writing Rick completely different, as a terrible tactician and leader – all contrary to how he’s been portrayed so far. Rick makes arguably the worst decision he’s ever made as leader after Negan’s second small group, led by Two-Face, attack: he decides to take some of the most useful people in the group on the road, away from the defensible colony, and head to Hilltop for…

… what? Reinforcements? Except it’s already been established that those people are soft and have no weapons! How useful would they be to the colony? None. Splitting the group compromised the strong position they were in and led to all the trouble in the second half of the book. That single decision was plain baffling, made no sense and felt totally out of character – Rick wouldn’t be that stupid! It was contrived solely so that Rick and Negan could meet, establish their enmity and nothing else.

This is just a minor aside but I found out in this volume that Heath is a dude! Heath was one of the new characters introduced since Rick and co. rocked up to the colony and I thought Heath was short for Heather (not sure why) and that she was a frumpy black woman. She kinda does look it – baggy clothes, kinda chubby, dreads, glasses – and there’s no audible voice in the comic to distinguish between male/female. I know Heath was in a relationship with the female doctor but I just assumed they were gay. Then we see Heath without a shirt in this book and… ohhh. Heath’s a dude! They’re just an interracial couple rather than a gay interracial couple. Wow, Charlie Adlard really drew that character ambiguously – at least to me! 

So there we go – thankfully the spice is back in The Walking Dead in the form of Negan and his army of Fonzies. And how about this for an amazing setup for the next book: Jesus vs The Fonz – why has no-one ever done this as a comic before?

Ayyy!

The Walking Dead Volume 17: Something to Fear

The Walking Dead, Volume 16: A Larger World Review (Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard)

Ah, there you are, story! Promise me you’ll never leave - it was horrible without you… Robert Kirkman had the characters digging trenches and… worrying about food… oh it was the worst! Thank zombie jesus that’s all past us! 

And speaking of jesus, a long haired peacenik with some crazy ideas calling himself Jesus shows up at the colony. Turns out there are other colonies surrounding them with more survivors, all trading with one another - and would Rick like to join Jesus and the rest of them? Rick being Rick - not even the saviour can tell him what to do! - he beats Jesus up and takes him hostage… before realising that he was telling the truth and wasn’t trying to rob/murder him and his kid. D’oh! 

That’s pretty much it for this volume! And I’ve realised why these books are being stretched out. We’re into the part of the series now where the TV show has taken off and become a hit so the longer he can get away with the bare minimum of story, the more he can spin out the books and TV episodes and make more money. Kinda like the George R R Martin method, where the end gets further and further away but the cheques keep getting bigger and bigger, so you just shrug and let it keep getting away from you. 

But yes, at least we do have a story now even if it’s recycled from earlier in the series. A group of nutters led by someone called Negan is terrorising the Hilltop outpost and Rick decides he and his battle-hardened group will destroy them, in exchange for much-needed supplies. This Negan chap sounds a lot like the Governor, no? Well, I’ll take that over the ditch-digging any day, even if it’s surprising just how few ideas Kirkman has - how many more Governors are we going to see in this seemingly never-ending series? 

I’m not religious but Jesus is alright with me - he takes out the two toughest characters in the series, Michonne and Abraham, single-handedly and without a gun! I’m secretly hoping he turns out to be the actual Judeo-Christian saviour and the series turns out to have been really about the Second Coming: the dead walking the Earth after the Rapture, Jesus’ battle with the Antichrist - can you imagine if that was the plan all along? Like the comic book Insane Clown Posse. 

Of course it wouldn’t be The Walking Dead without a paper-thin character you neither know nor care about being killed horribly and the characters over-reacting in a scene we’ve seen dozens of times before. And how is Carl still alive? Seriously, the kid had a hole in his head the size of a golf ball but he’s alive and walking about having just come out of a life-threatening coma! 

I suppose that’s the price we have to pay for having a story again - throw logic out the window! But it’s nice to have a plot injecting some much needed energy into proceedings and giving the characters something to do. Rick and Jesus vs Negan (and maybe the Antichrist?) - get some!

The Walking Dead Volume 16: A Larger World